Christmas shopping with Uncle Easy

I was talking with my cousin Kay earlier this week and we talked about how this was the time of year when as a child I'd go out with my Uncle Easy to go shopping for toys for the younger members of our family. Being a bachelor, he would say he needed help picking out the right fits. When the planned day came around, Uncle Easy would pick me up and we'd go have dinner, after which we'd make our way to Toys 'R' Us and he'd ask "would this be good for so-and-so?", checking his list to make sure he had something for everyone. After we were done, we'd drop the presents off with Kay so she could wrap them.

Part of going shopping is I'd get to help pick out my own gift. That made Uncle Easy's gift somewhat backward - I opened it so everyone else could see what it was, even though I already knew.

Uncle Easy would join us for Christmas breakfast and my mom would make sure a stocking was put out for him. His was a rather large one that said "For the person who has everything" or something like that. At the end of breakfast, he and my Aunt Frances would have a mock battle over who would get more pumpkin pie. Don't look at me like that - who hasn't had pumpkin pie with breakfast?

Kay makes sure I remember that I got dinner out of the deal when I went shopping with Uncle Easy and that she ended up with wrapping all the gifts, but I'm pretty sure that she enjoyed doing it for Uncle. I do know that Uncle Easy was generous with all of us and he enjoyed spending time with the extended family, no matter what form it took. Everyone would watch over him (he had dinner with Kay's family on Monday, ours on Tuesday, and Aunt Haru's on Friday) but I think he wanted to make sure we were all doing fine, too. He passed away in 1985, but we all still feel his loss greatly.